Interview with Sokar
March 3
It's dark in here. Hard to write when you can't see the papyrus. Or your pen. Or your hand. Or anything, for that matter. Why am I even bothering?
March 4
It's still dark. Anubis brought me a tape recorder, thinking maybe I could use that instead of writing in my journal, but it's too dark for me to find the outlet to plug it in. Least the kid could've done is bring me a battery-operated model? Idiot.
March 5
You guessed it. Still dark. Nephthys made fun of me. She says she can see fine and has no idea what my problem is. Well, la dee da. Sucks to be me?
March 6
I figured out why it was so dark! I had my sunglasses on. Forgot to take them off after Ra came to visit. Not surprised that I forgot, though. I spent that whole week dealing with the worst sunburn I've ever had. Note to self: Never invite Ra to dinner again, at least not without some serious SPF.
So now that I can actually write in this journal again, I'm happy. It gets lonely down here in the darkness sometimes. Nephthys and Anubis get to go back and forth all the time, to talk to the newly dead, and bring them over. Osiris gets to see everybody—and I mean everybody. There isn't a soul in the afterlife that hasn't been to his party hall, if only for the final judgment. But so few people come to see me anymore, especially since Osiris took over my job in Abydos. What's a falcon god with a sweet boat to do? You got it—go sailing. Found my way down to the Nile (yes, we have one here too) and slipped the Henu boat into the current. Got a few miles in, but because it's so dark, there's really nothing to look at. At least the current was soothing. I threw Anubis's tape recorder into the water. Don't really need it anymore, now that I can see to write again. Threw my sunglasses in, too. Hopefully I won't end up regretting that later.
April 10
So, for the last month, everyone in the afterlife has been talking about the voices in the subterranean Nile. Some of the gods and spirits even went down to the water to see if they could hear them better. One of them told me he was hearing the Knicks game, so I figured I'd better go check this out. Won't do to have everybody in the Duat going crazy. Then, I found out that they weren't hallucinating. They really WERE hearing voices in the water! Except they were coming from Anubis's tape recorder, which did have batteries in it after all. Oops. Fished it out of the water with a big net, but I didn't have the guts to tell everybody how it got there. I think Osiris knows, but he's being nice and not telling anybody. I owe him, big time.
May 27
Horus (which one? Who knows? They all look alike to me) marched off to war again, and most of the other gods have gone off to check out the action. That leaves me and Osiris to hang out in the dark. You can only play so many hands of poker, and drink so many jars of beer that the temple priests are so nice to leave us, before you just get bored! We weren't sure what to do, so Osiris got on the phone and called up Ptah in Memphis, who was also at home. Guess the mummy wrappings keep him from doing too many walking tours. Anyway, so Ptah got some priests to put him on a sled and push him down here, so then it was the three of us hanging out.
It was a great day. I always have so much fun with those two. We should get together and start a supergroup or something. Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Got a good ring to it, doesn't it?
July 13
Ptah kind of got carried away with the supergroup thing. He's taken to referring to himself entirely as Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, and declared that the last day of the Egyptian year (which is today) is his special holiday. Whatever. All I'm saying is that Osiris and I had better get a cut of that bread and beer, or there's going to be a pretty nasty zombie invasion in Memphis for New Year. Won't that be a surprise?
July 19
Happy New Year! Osiris talked me out of the zombie invasion, but we did convince Anubis to sneak into Ptah's bathroom and switch out his mummy wrappings for tissue paper. He's going to get quite a surprise if he goes to the Sekhmet temple for the annual new year's baths today! And people wonder whether death gods are evil….